She turned toward him, and as she turned she reached around to her back pocket and touched the rectangular outline of her badge case. She felt her stomach drop and the color drain from her face.
Rico held a serrated knife in his upraised hand. He brought it down violently and plunged the blade into her breast. She gasped at the pain as he withdrew it.
The knife swept down again. Rico's face was a grimace of effort and ambition, and the steel pierced her flesh and bone.
Rachel's howl filled the room.
CHAPTER 21
'I had this freak come over to my crib last night,' said the man who called himself King.
'Big freak. Had some big legs and a
'She look like an animal?' said Momo, King's friend.
'Nah, man, she ain't look like that.'
''Cause that last female you had looked like an animal.'
'Yes, she did.'
'The woman I had last night looked good.'
'But on the heavy side, huh?'
'A little.'
'Like a big old beast.'
'Your mother look like a beast.'
'Your sister does.'
'Your father.'
'Go ahead, King.' Momo turned to Melvin Lee. 'Melvin, tell me King's last girlfriend didn't look like a horse and shit.'
'I ain't getting into this,' said Lee. 'Not today.'
Lee, King, and Momo were on dry detail at the car wash. King and Momo had both done time. They talked about women, and sometimes the Redskins, all day long. Normally, Lee joined them. But he wasn't in the mood.
Some days he didn't mind these two, but others, he wished he was working in the back with the one older dude and the two Spanish, the ones who prepped the cars before they rolled 'em inside. Out here in the front, where the cars came out clean and dripping, alls they had him doing was holding a rag, getting the excess wet off the vehicle, wiping down the interior, and all that. Like he wasn't even smart enough to point a hose at the wheels. Reminded him of those classes they used to stick him in before he dropped out of school, with all the kids couldn't read or add two and two, like he was one step off of retard himself.
Nearby, an older man stood beside his 7-Series and watched them dry it off.
'Get the hood,' said the man, pointing to it. 'Last time I brought my BMW in here you left drops on it. I can't be driving around in a water-stained vehicle.'
'Get it, Momo,' said King. 'You heard the man.'
Momo leaned over the hood and wiped it down. Good thing he did, 'cause Lee wasn't about to. Old man thinking he was something, had to tell them it was a BMW, like they were blind. An old BMW at that, an '89, two body styles back. Leather interior all cracked and shit, looked like the old man's skin. One of those bourgeois brothers, moved west of Rock Creek and forgot who he was.
Least they talked free around his kind. With the Caucasian customers, you said nothing, even when they were talking directly to you, out of pride. With the females, you kept your mouth shut too, unless they were feisty with you first. And then you didn't know how far to go. Some of these females, they'd complain to management if you took that man-woman thing past its limit, no matter who started it off.
The old man walked over to the tip box, which wasn't no more than a metal toolbox, padlocked shut, with a slit cut out the top. King had wrote this sign over it, said, 'Tips please, this is how we feed our families,' though King had fathered five kids and had never given one of them a thin dime. The old man pulled a dollar bill out of his wallet, doing it slow so they could see him, like he was giving them a thousand dollars instead of one, and shoved it down the slit.
'Dry the wheels too,' said the car's owner.
'My man gonna get it,' said Momo, meaning King.
King looked at Momo out the corner of his eye and crouched down to dry off the first of the wheels.
'So?' said Momo, standing over him as he did the task.
'What?' said King without looking up.
'You ain't finish the story. Did you do the freak or not?'
'What you think?'
'How'd you do her?'
'Woman that size, you got to ride her.'
'Did you?'
